Kamaladevi's Grandmother

Memories of my Granny
by Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya

In my imagination, my grandmother, my mother's mother, was a colossus who strode across my life. She was one of the several unusual women that our country has produced from time to time. Though a mother of seven, she seemed emotionally rather detached as though settled on a mountain top, while here progeny and their own brood with a myriad problems tossed around below. This capacity to be still, to be relaxed, full of a silence that was pregnant not empty, which stirred me, my mother explained, came of deep meditation. I was stirred by an interest in it, hoped this would soothe my restless spirit, and Mother tried to guide me. It did me help.

Grandmother's absorbing interest was in books and learning. The main hall served as a library where every afternoon she sat with a few sagacious looking gentlemen, as one of them read from the books piled up. Then they went into discussions. The scene fascinated me and I liked to sit in the group wanting to be one of them though I could not follow them. When no one was around I would struggle with one of the books and pretend to read it, and it gave me rare pleasure.

Seeing my keen interest, grandmother encouraged me with a grin of approval. "Books are lifelong friends," she said, "and will stay with you in faith, teach you many truths, and enrich your mind." Gradually she tried to open up my mind with short chats "taste the tiny drop of its essence and you will continue to linger on it," as she put it. It was only later that I grasped the full import of it, for I realized the "tiny drops" as she described were the real essence of our philosophy, the foundation from which flowed a way of life. Thus was I provided a lasting background of tradition to lend value and flavor to the varied facets in my life.

She was amongst the unusual in other ways too. Earlier she had traveled all over the country with her husband and though she was now alone and well advanced in age, she still continued her travels, visiting her daughters. The railway lines were only just being laid and had come within a hundred miles of us; nevertheless, she traveled alone by boat, by bullock cart, and even on foot! The journey from home started by crossing a river in a boat, usually by night, stretching out through the length of the boat and going off to sleep. The boatmen were Moplahs, a sturdy and fiery community generally forbidding looking. Further there were in fact, several more rivers to be crossed as also jogging in bullock carts. She came back from these trips in radiant spirits, though physically rather wan. "Some women think that I am a bad woman because I go alone and put myself in the hands of the Moplahs," she once told me. She described the boatmen as also cart drivers as gallant who took care of her with respect for her age. Today as I travel by plane, train or car and get mercilessly pushed around, I tell myself I should be a teeny, weeny chip of that old block.

One indelible last memory I have of her is when her only son died. She sat dry eyed, aloof, a figure of strength, while all the sobbing and wailing went on around.